10 years ago, if Hollywood had done a science fiction movie about

[mtnsnake]

what's been going on in the last FIVE years, would any single one of you have believed it could ever happen in real life?

I wonder what the title of the movie would have been, and who would've played the villains.

[still_one]

1. The Dead Zone

[whistle]

2. Fritz Lang did the film over 75 years ago "Last Testament of Dr Mabuse"

...and 10 years before as a silent film of the German Cinema, "Dr. Mabuse -- The Gambler"

These films have been standard recommended cinema for the neo-conservatives in training who are of the Leo Strauss school of conservative thought.

<snip>
WHO

The founders' names are well known: Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell, James Q. Wilson, and Seymour Martin Lipset. These were authors whose essays appeared regularly in The Public Interest.

Invisible was Leo Strauss, who died in 1973. He was a professor of political philosophy at the University of Chicago. He was known in academic conservative circles in the 1950's and especially the early 1960's. As to how many people there are or ever were who have understood his books is a good question, but Irving Kristol has given him a great deal of credit in shaping his thinking. Strauss' students now occupy senior positions on Bush's foreign policy advisory teams.

Strauss co-edited an academic volume, History of Political Philosophy (Rand McNally, 1963). One of the contributors, Harry Jaffa of Claremont Men's College, a year later ghost wrote Barry Goldwater's acceptance speech, which included the words that cost him millions of votes, however true they may be: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."

<more>
<link> http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north180.html

Let the scales fall from our eyes, let us see the truth

[mtnsnake]

5. Wow, interesting stuff. I wonder if Karl Rove is a student

of the Dr Mabuse films.

[whistle]

7. No doubt, student and master follower....

...it's almost like these neo-con true believers are following the same script, Mabuse's last testament instructions = PNAC

The whole philosophy and conditions mapped out in Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse movies beginning in 1922 and then 1933 and near the end of Lang's life in 1960 with the 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse are so prophetic of how the BushCo thing is unfolding today.

Lang did his last silent film in 1929 after talkies began to really take off called "Woman On The Moon". The whole sequence of the rocket technology, how the rocket would be sent into space in stages, the design and engineering of the actual rocket, etc., when shown today with sound added would be an accurate depiction of the moon landings from Cape Kennedy in the late 1960's and throughout the 1970's. Lang's idea that the moon was actually inhabited and had an earth-like atmosphere was a flight of creative fancy, but the rest of the scientific depictions were almost dead on correct.

Amazingly Lang an Austrian, became anti-fascist and fled Nazi Germany in early 1933, came to the United States a year later and began directing films here for the next 25 years. Yet he was blacklisted as a communist during the McCarthy era, but survived that persecution. Of what I've seen of his films, I've enjoyed. I digress....let me know if you have the opportunity to see his Dr. Mab use films...the ones he directed...and then what you think about how they apply to what we are witnessing in our present times.

[maveric]

3. "Daybreak" 1993 Futuristic, fascist America. Prophetic.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106676/plotsummary

[Stinky Bushes]

4. "Hard Rain" that mirrored the Katrina disaster

well didn't necessarily say hurricane but was about a town that flooded out. Then of course criminals, chases, etc.

[daninthemoon]

6. Science fiction isn't quite right. I've tried to come up with the surreal

"thing" that has happened to America, but just can't get it. Apocalyptic something or other. Something to do with America changing from a republic to an empire. Something about most of the people not even noticing. Something about the Walker Dynasty which will certainly descend into even further depravity cloaked as rightousness.

[Zynx]

8. Most Hollywood disaster movies differ in two ways from the NO mess

1. They tend not to account for the 5-10% of people that are predatory little shits who can't wait to steal, gouge, continue to commit their normal crimes or otherwise exploit their fellow man in a time of need.

2. They tend to have a reasonably competent, intelligent federal government.

[leeroysphitz]

9. I had a history professor in the early to mid 90's

that predicted an intense resurgence in religious fundamentalism and kookery in general. (yes I equate religious fundamentalism of any kind with kooks, yes I'm an atheist and yes I do believe that the other 95% of the human race that isn't is delusional.) All as a result of the millennium (based obviously on the western religious hysteria that accompanied the last millennial turn over.(in the west)).

I remember thinking for a while, in 2000-2001 that he must have been wrong. Oops.His predictions may have had the exact date a little off but man was he dead on about the hysteria and the kooks.

[mtnsnake]

10. Your history professor was sharp, but I'll bet that even he

couldn't have looked ahead and envisioned the lunacy that's enveloped this country for 5 years.

Only in a movie like Batman or Superman would you have someone so sinister as Bush and Cheney taking over. The only difference is that we're living the reality and we've got Lex Luthor's real-life alter ego as president.

(edited for clarity)